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Back in May, 2011 I built the beginnings of a wattled fence for the garden. It started out quite nice and I thought it had a lot of potential. Everyone I showed pictures to liked it. Neighbors who walked by liked. Seemed like such a great idea. Here's what it started out looking like:

The idea was to continue adding branches over time and make a nice solid fence. This kind of fence has been known to last many years, and as it seems I do a new fence every year or two - this seemed a great idea! You know the old saying, "...best laid plans," ? What I didn't plan for was this:

Thaaaat's right...you fell for it didn't you? I can hear it now...awwww he's so cute! What a sweety! He's so adorable! Well, all those things are true for sure...but what you don't know is this adorable representative of the Man's-best-friend club made an absolute mockery of the wattle fence! Oh he wasn't vicious about it or anything. As a matter-of-fact, s…

I don't even know what else to call this thing. Pavers under the garden bench? Eine Kleine Patio? Well, whatever it's called - it's about time. I love my little garden bench but sitting on it in summer always left the
ankles exposed to all the mosquitoes that seemed to hover under the bench. On top of that it always looked a little sloppy because not much grass grew under there, and occasionally a neighborhood cat would decide it was a great place to sleep - at least until Linus came out!

So this season I decided to do something about it. First I laid out the 16" pavers to get an idea of positioning and so I'd know exactly where to dig. The nice thing is this was a small project so the digging was minimal.

Then I just laid out the pavers, leveled them, and swept some soil into the cracks. I wish I knew the name of the pavers, but they are a kind of oldish looking brown with gray and I really liked the design. I got them at Lowe's for about $4.50 each…

1928. That's right...85 years, that's how old the roof was on ol' 173! Well, yesterday marked the end of an era. The Bangor slate roof, original to the house, was replaced with shingles. Believe it or not, it was a difficult decision to make. When we bought the house in '97, one of the things that attracted us was the slate roof. We had a roofer look at it and he said it was in decent shape but needed regular maintenance. With said maintenance we'd get anywhere from 15 to 50 more years from the roof. Well! That sounded great! I wish we had the internet back then, well I suppose we did but certainly not in its current iteration! I found this great site called Slate Roof Central, which gives a great tutorial on identifying and caring for slate.

"One of the more common of the PA black slates is "Bangor" slate from Bangor, PA. It is a smooth surfaced finely grained slate that lasts about 90 years." - from Slate Roof Central
So every year or tw…